This past July, Family Planning 2020, an initiative aiming to increase accessibility to family planning services in developing countries, celebrated its one-year anniversary. Sponsored by the United Kingdom, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Family Planning 2020, or FP2020, is working with governments around the globe to ensure that 120 million more women in the world have access to family planning aid by 2020. Convening at the London Summit for Family Planning last year, governments, sponsors, donors, civil societies, and private sector representatives laid out a goal-based timeline for success.

FP2020 targets the poorest countries in the world. Today, more than 200 million of women in developing countries want to avoid pregnancy but lack access to family planning and contraceptives. What FP2020 aims to do for these women is provide much needed information, services, and mechanisms for family planning. Over 20 governments worldwide are committed to the initiative, among them the governments of India, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Kenya.

As July 11th – World Population Day as well as the anniversary date of the London Summit – approached, FP2020 partners were applauded for their progress and were encouraged to keep moving forward. Since the FP2020 London Summit last year, Zambia has seen the promising creation of a national strategy that has brought religious, tribal, and community leaders into the conversation of improving family planning services and accessibility to contraceptives in all areas of the country. In Sierra Leone, the government has funneled significant funds towards its health and family planning sectors. In Nigeria, FP2020 partners are working to open clinics in strategic areas that will serve people within a 12-mile radius, improving accessibility to family planning services. Other partner nations are undertaking similar initiatives.

The future of FP2020 gleams with the hope of improving lives for millions of women in the developing world. In the words of the director of the FP2020 project, Valerie DeFillipo, “The global community is recommitted and re-energized. We as individuals have the power to ensure that women’s autonomy over health-related decisions is a fundamental right, not a privilege.”